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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25639306">if you're my shadow, what does that make me?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account'>orphan_account</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Can be Read as Shippy or Gen, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Sky Factory, rated t if only for the blood alter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 11:22:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,621</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25639306</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Gavin knows he's not like the others. Not flesh and faith. Not meat and bone. But something else.</p>
<p>And at the end of the day, he guesses he's just looking for someone who understands what it's like to be like, well, him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gavin Free &amp; Ryan Haywood, Gavin Free/Ryan Haywood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>63</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>if you're my shadow, what does that make me?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tallowwood/gifts">Tallowwood</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>this is for Tallow of the RT Writer's Discord! for our secret sunshine writing event</p>
<p>thank you for the prompts! i hope you enjoy what i wrote for you!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He doesn’t remember what occurred before. But that’s true for just about anyone. No one can remember anything before what they already know. Nothing existed then. But Gavin likes to wonder, at the very least, what came before.</p>
<p>To his knowledge, he believes Geoff or Jack were the first ones to become who they are—whatever they are. He thinks he mirrored them in terms of look and appearance. At least, that’s what they say.</p>
<p>“You were just an annoying ball of light,” Geoff would say. “Followed us around like a right nuisance until eventually you tried mirroring us. Like an annoying firefly.”</p>
<p>“I highly doubt that’s what it was like.”</p>
<p>“You mirrored your beard off of Jack’s and my lean physique.”</p>
<p>“Whatever you say, Chicken Man.”</p>
<p>“You can deny it all you want, Sunshine. We’re your dads now.”</p>
<p>“Wha—what does that even <em>mean</em>?”</p>
<p>Needless to say, Gavin doesn’t always understand Jack and Geoff. They are of a different sort. They like plants and animals—Jack and his endless desire for stringent organization, and Geoff with his creative capacity for new breeds of chickens. But Gavin isn’t really the plant or animal type. Well, sure, he’s involved in plants a little. It’s his light that allows them to grow.</p>
<p>(A complicated process Jack calls photosynthesis. Gavin couldn’t really care less.)</p>
<p>Everyone here has their own <em>thing. </em>Their special niche where everything makes sense for once. Gavin’s light is just innate. If he wants to be an annoying ball of light, then he can be. If Geoff wants to charm all the animals he encounters, he can. If Jack wants to grow some sort of corn monstrosity, then all the power to him. But for the most part, the three of them are relatively <em>normal, </em>lets say. Sun. Dirt. Chickens. It all makes sense. They were the first three to arrive but then came the other three.</p>
<p>Next is Michael. He is a wanderer of sorts. A collector of fine things. Geoff always calls him a magpie—even if neither Gavin nor Michael really understand in the inherent connection between a bird and Michael.</p>
<p>If there’s one thing that easily defined their relationship, it’s the free exchange of odd and interesting goods. Anything they could find on their adventures. From Michael’s numerous battles and conquests. From the worlds and realms they hop to through their portals.</p>
<p>Michael is good to hang around. For the most part he didn’t mind Gavin’s inane questions.</p>
<p>“If you slip when it’s wrong and hurt yourself until you’re unconscious, would you drown?”</p>
<p>“No, wh—I don’t fucking <em>care.</em> Why do you ask me this stuff?”</p>
<p>He’s all well and good fun and humors Gavin’s desire to learn what makes them <em>them.</em></p>
<p>And then there’s Jeremy. He has his own peculiarities. Nothing organic or anything considered natural. He likes to push his experiments and knowledge further than Geoff and Jack would ever dare. His skills are related to the occult, discovering the purposes and limitations of life, longevity, and even death on some accounts.</p>
<p>He has what’s called a blood altar. And to feed the thing, he requires vast amounts of blood which come from what he calls the Hollow. Human like forms that don’t have souls in them. Or at least that’s what Jeremy says. Whether or not that’s true, Gavin wouldn’t be able to tell, but whenever he passes by the blood altar and the suspended Hollow over it, he can’t help but feel a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.</p>
<p>“Do you ever think there might be more of us out there?”</p>
<p>“Like what?” Jeremy asked. “Gods or whatever we you?”</p>
<p>“No like.” He gestured vaguely. “Whatever you got there? Human things.”</p>
<p>“Maybe. I don’t know. Creating life isn’t really my department, you know? I’m more like a leech. Why don’t you go talk to Geoff and Jack about this stuff? I’m pretty sure they could make a human.”</p>
<p>“Nah, I mean like . . . spontaneous creation. You know. Sort of like how we ended up here.”</p>
<p>He’s just a ball of light taking on a humanoid form because it’s what he thinks is expected of him. It allows him to fit in, to connect to them, but they’re all constrained within their forms—meat and bone as Geoff would say.</p>
<p>Even Michael—Gavin’s closest friend if he had to put a label on it—is but another meat and bone entity. He’s prone to wandering and fighting. He doesn’t have one specific thing he likes to create and build like the others. He doesn’t experience drive the same way the others do. He’ll perform tasks for them, fulfill requests, but mostly he does as he pleases. Gavin likes to think of him as the embodiment of wind just as Gavin is the embodiment of light. Michael goes wherever he feels he’s being pulled, but Gavin knows he’s just not the same.</p>
<p>“You’ve been hopping to other worlds,” Gavin said one day. They were splayed out on some idyllic meadow, floating in the midst of the cosmos as everything in their lives did.</p>
<p>Michael hummed in response. It was a lazy day, as many days with Michael usually were. “Been to a lot of them.”</p>
<p>“You ever find anything new? Anything we don’t already have here?”</p>
<p>“Not yet. Why are you interested?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know. I like to think about the big picture, you know? What else is out there? Why are we gathered here? What sets us apart really from Jeremy’s Hollow? Or all the other sentient creatures we meet up with?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know, man. Why question when what we got is good eatin’?”</p>
<p>Michael never asks the big questions. He’s content with his lot in life, and when Gavin is looking for some good fun, he’s the first person Gavin sees.</p>
<p>And then that leaves Ryan, the final of their little group among the stars here. Ryan is unlike any of the others. He stands apart much in the way that Gavin feels he stands apart. He isn’t quite sure if Ryan is like him—where Gavin is light embodying a humanoid and Ryan is shadow embodying one as well.</p>
<p>But he hasn’t confirmed his hypothesis.</p>
<p>If only because Ryan is a recluse who flitters into people’s lives only when it suits him. Where Jeremy likes to work with cold stone and onyx, Ryan favours metals—ores and precious gems to bring life to his creations.</p>
<p>They’re all cold in a way. False approximations of life, and Gavin often wonders if Ryan makes these things because he’s questioning what life is.</p>
<p>He has an underneath realm in which he built platforms and foundations underneath the groundwork that Geoff and Jack painstakingly laid before the rest of them came to be. Sometimes he’ll pop up unexpectedly and dive back into the ground, back to what’s familiar to him. Gavin can’t really blame him. It’s hard to feel like you belong when you know this world isn’t really for you. Sure, Gavin is light. He knows he’s important to Jack’s plants, to the routine of the day, but what else is there than that? Where does he fit into all this?</p>
<p>Sometimes he’ll descend to Ryan’s beneath-o-verse (Ryan hates that name) and make himself at home. Ryan never minds. He likes the company as he works, endlessly tinkering away on some new project.</p>
<p>“What’s on the slate for today?” he asks.</p>
<p>“I was thinking a metal chicken for Geoff,” Ryan muses. He has a box full of thin metal feathers he’s going to painstakingly glue together for the wings and plumage. “I’m not sure if it’s going to be able to do anything, but I think he’ll find some use for it.”</p>
<p>Ryan can be incredibly thoughtful when the mood strikes him. Otherwise, he’s a downright terror. Building things for Michael that Michael has no idea what they do. Using the above-o-sphere for his own experimental testing ground until Jack <em>literally </em>terraformed a new piece of space for him to do whatever he wanted. Gavin likes Ryan’s brand of chaos even if it causes a headache to the others. It’s that unrestrained fun that he’s so drawn to. Ryan has fun with what he does even if he doesn’t always understand it.</p>
<p>“You ever think about why we’re here? How we got here in the first place? What we’re supposed to do with our talents?”</p>
<p>Gavin often thinks that his talents aren’t as outspoken as the others. Jack can grow anything. Geoff attracts animals and wildlife as easily as he breaths. Jeremy understands the matters of the <em>soul, </em>and Michael can make friends pretty much anywhere. Even Ryan has an innate ability to see how things can be connected, how they can be shaped. Gavin more or less walks around and his light does something without him meaning or realizing.</p>
<p>He’s just an embodiment of light. There’s nothing special to it.</p>
<p>He’s holding his hand up to one of the lights in Ryan’s cramped workspace—none of the neat organization that Jack prefers. If he stares long enough at his hand, he can see through himself, the outline of his hand but through the false approximation of meat and bone. There’s nothing there.</p>
<p>“If I don’t what I’m supposed to do, then what am I?” He can see his form flicker with the light. “Not a humanoid. Not a he. Not a she. Not a they.” Did he choose this only because Jack and Geoff were the first ones he saw? Copying his form more off of Geoff’s slenderness and Jack’s recognizable facial hair when it suited him? His playful attitude and behaviour to match that of Jeremy and Michael. What is truly his own? Is he even his own?</p>
<p>“You’re dissipating,” Ryan says. He’s finally turned in his seat a bit to actually acknowledge Gavin’s presence and his words cause Gavin to solidify. He can no longer see the light through his hand, so he must be solid enough.</p>
<p>Ryan sets down his partially finished metal monster-chicken and rolls over on his chair to where Gavin is. He holds Gavin’s hand between his own if only because he’s curious at Gavin not being a real humanoid and just a manifestation of one. It’s not something often discussed among any of them. That Gavin is really, truly set apart from them. He’s not like <em>them.</em></p>
<p>“How often would you say you lose yourself?” Ryan asks. He still hasn’t let go of Gavin’s hand.</p>
<p>“Not often. Not unless I put conscious thought into it.” And maybe when he’s stressed, but Ryan already knows that.</p>
<p>(He also likes the care and consideration that Ryan shows him when he’s experiencing a moment of doubt. Ryan’s calloused hands feel good on the approximation of his skin, his meat and bone—or at least the impersonation of it.)</p>
<p>“Do you feel it’s weird to be inhabiting a form like this?” Ryan asks softly.</p>
<p>Gavin shrugs and folds his hands in his lap when Ryan releases his hand and sits back in his chair. “I mean, I sort of based how I look off the two people I first saw. If I saw a chicken first, I bet I’d be just another of Geoff’s pets.”</p>
<p>“I’m sure Geoff wouldn’t keep you. You’d be too annoying.”</p>
<p>Gavin breathes out through his nose in soft laugh. “Thanks. I guess.”</p>
<p>They sit in silence for a moment. Gavin takes the chance to study the planes of Ryan’s face. He seems in thought. His eyes flick towards Gavin, and Gavin drops his gaze for a second only to look back. They share a moment before Ryan drops his gaze, hands tucked under his arms.</p>
<p>“Can I share something with you?” Ryan asks and it takes Gavin by surprise for a moment. Ryan’s known to be an over-sharer. In that he talks to himself when he’s working, talks about what he’s doing to whoever is around to listen. He doesn’t need to do it, but it’s given Gavin the impression that Ryan wasn’t a secret type of guy. Yeah, he’d release his metal monsters without telling anyone, but those are surprises. Not secrets you keep close to your chest because you’re worried about what people might think of you should you loosen your lips.</p>
<p>“Yeah, of course. What is it?”</p>
<p>Ryan moves himself so that the light source is between him and Gavin, casting Ryan’s shadow long and far against the wall. He raises a hand and so does his shadow, and eventually, his <em>arm </em>bleeds into the shadow—dissipates just as Gavin can with the light. But the shadow of his arm, continues to grow against the wall, taking on a life of itself even as Ryan calmly sits in his chair with a sort of resigned expression.</p>
<p>“What are you saying?” he asks softly because he’s afraid he’s going to break the moment between them.</p>
<p>Ryan turns his face towards Gavin, and Gavin can see through him clearly now. More and more of him is bleeding onto the wall, but then he comes back to himself. Within the blink of an eye, Ryan is back—as steady as he is.</p>
<p>He’s quiet and Gavin doesn’t pester him with questions. He gives him time and space to come up with the words he needs.</p>
<p>“I sort of slithered up from the ground one day,” Ryan says. “It wasn’t really intentional. I wasn’t there. And then I was. Moving along the ground after you would pass by. I could only ever follow you at first. And then you formed into something. Into <em>this.</em>” He waves his hand at Gavin’s body, but his tone and the look in his eyes is one of admiration. “And I didn’t understand it at first, but then I got my hands. Clawed my way out of the ground and then followed by the rest of me.</p>
<p>“For a while, I was <em>you. </em>Your shadow. Sort of. It’s confusing. I don’t think I could really think of myself until Geoff and Jack made more of this place and then I understood I was a separate entity to you. So I pulled away until I sort of felt more myself.</p>
<p>“Played around with different forms. Short. Tall. Male. Female. Androgynous. Tried to feel like <em>me </em>at the end of it. But even after you guys found me out, once I found a stable form, I just never told anyone. That I’m only like this because of you guys. And sometimes that’s hard to comprehend. What if I saw Geoff’s chickens first, you know?”</p>
<p>At that Gavin laughs because Geoff would probably <em>love </em>chickens made out of light and shadow. He’d stick them both in their designated crates and putter on endlessly for his chickens while being none of the wiser.</p>
<p>“For me, I want to know what else is out there,” Gavin says. “This can’t all be it. What we have here. The few rocks we’ve cobbled together to make something. And certainly not like the Hollow or those zombie pig things in the Nether. What about actual people? People like us but bound to a sphere, you know?”</p>
<p>“Yeah. I do. I know Michael likes to wander, but he’s looking for a challenge. Whereas I’m looking for—”</p>
<p>“Answers.”</p>
<p>“Yeah.”</p>
<p>The admission is soft, and Gavin truly realizes in that moment the connection he shares with Ryan. Why Ryan usually goes out of his way to do whatever Gavin asks, make whatever his heart desires. It’s somewhat baffling at times, but it makes sense now. It all makes sense.</p>
<p>“Would you want to go on a journey with me?” Gavin says. “Somewhere far away from here?”</p>
<p>“I thought you’d never ask.”</p>
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